DEAR REPUBLICANS AND PROGRESSIVE EVANGELICALS: A NOTE ON A WAY OUT OF THE QUAGMIRE

Dear Iowa Republicans,

Allow me to introduce myself! I am Kevin Anthony Stoda. I am a Midwesterner with roots in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. I am also candidating on-line and without a budget for the Presidency of the United States. I announced my candidacy a week ago.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_071130_i_decided_to_run_for.htm

I am running on-line and in your upcoming Presidential Caucus in order to bring a more balanced Evangelical and real American Justice Perspective to the Republican Party and its campaigns in 2008. I want to pressure the party into accepting and representing the vast number of conservative Americans who see the compact between people and our Federal State to include the need to apply the rule of law at the highest levels.

This means REPUBLICANS NEED TO WALK OVER TO THE WHITE HOUSE AND TELL GEORGE W. BUSH and DICK CHENEY TO RESIGN OR BE IMPEACHED.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_rob_kall_071207_rebuttals_to_reasons.htm

If Midwestern Republicans don’t get our party leadership to walk over to the White House and set up these resignations—and force the appointment of good and fair Republican Leadership immediately, the Republican Party will continued to be tainted by Bush and Co. throughout the next decade.

If Republicans beat the Democrats to the door on impeachment—a step required in the scenario we now face by our own founding fathers who set up the ground rules for ousting leadership decades ago--, we will get whipped all over the place in the coming decades as American voters move back to the center and left in terms of HEALTH CARE REFORM and commitment to the poorest.

I am an evangelical Christian who believes that sacrificing real Christian historical commitments to justice and empowerment (of the lowest members in our society and world) to misguided plans of creating a Puritan state in the U.S.A. is a NON-STARTER.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_071201_day_2_of_the_campaig.htm

Christians need to see themselves as passing through this planet. This passing through is not a free pass. It comes with commitments.

In the book of Genesis, we are charged as humans to take care of the planet and earth

This means:

-Stop wasting resources on things that go boom and supporting the watering down of the constitution (including habeas corpus) and rights of those among us!

-Set a good example by leading the fight against man-made related global warming! (Even if part of global warming is a natural occurrence, Americans-- as users of the greatest amount of natural resources and as the wealthiest country on the planet--need to set an example by using alternative sources of energy produced by wind and sun. Midwesterners have an abundance of this. We also have the ability not only to grow corn but the ability to grow rapeseed and other crops, like sugar beats, which could reduce America’s over-demand of global resources.)

-Stop being dependent on totalitarians to maintain U.S. security and fuel supplies.


SHORT HISTORY OF OUR CAMPAIGN

A few month’s ago, I wrote an article which outlines my dismay at the far right and misguided evangelical support of a shift in America from core human, social, and labor values that had made America the light of the world at mid-20th Century.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_alone_071006_continuing_to_ponder.htm

Prior to this, I had advocated that the time was right to try and set the political scene on its head by having campaigns carried out in a reality TV format so that costs could be kept down and real issues could be discussed.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_070907_what_about_a__22realit.htm

We all know the status quo in American Politics is not functioning well. Elections are getting way too costly, which leaves a few media tycoons and others in charge of sound bites which kill and mislead all too quickly. So, I have discussed elsewhere, the need to make it, first, easier to reform, update, and amend the parts of the constitution which no longer enforce nor support good governance. (Come on! Our founding fathers would have been astounded that we only have amended their work about 15 times since 1795 and have not touched the document again since almost the 1960s. They talked about making a more perfect union—not to claim by default or neglect that the union was already perfect, i.e. as some people imply when they want to keep the status quo for their own personal benefits.)

I advocate constitutional conventions be encouraged and started up with support of all parties.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_kevin_an_070729_needed_now__constitu.htm

For example, the problems with elections themselves have more to do with the negative aspects of winner-take-all voting system. This should be one of the first areas of election reform. (Shorter campaigns and spending limits need to be enforced in many aspects of campaigns. Otherwise equal-access laws for all candidates need to be created and enforced.

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2007/11/since-voting-theorists-feel-that.html

I first set forth the problems faced by evangelical progressives in today’s world by looking at the now-classic study of “What’s the matter with Kansas?”. In it I indicated that there was a tend big enough in Kansas and other Midwestern states to include combinations like progressive evangelicals as had been prominent in America from the 1840s through the 1970s. (There is also room for peoples of myriads of faiths and beliefs who are ready to improve on the messed-up economy, government spending, and status quo America is facing today.)

http://www.opednews.com/articles/not_sh_kevin_an_070501_progressive_evangeli.htm


WHO AM I?

I come from a pair of families with a great number of members serving (or having served) in the U.S. military—all with the best intentions. I, however, am an American educator who needs to show a more balanced view of our world to our students and youth than what American media and public education have provided.

Graduating from a Kansas high school in 1980, I had had no foreign language educational experience. I had only even crossed a U.S. border once to Tiajuana by the time I was 20 years of age.

Yet, I have now (1) crossed border to nearly 100 countries, (2) have lived and worked in ten countries—sometimes with the support of the U.S. government or other agencies--, and (3) have learned fluent German and Spanish as well as intermediate levels of Japanese, French plus smatterings of other languages.

In short, since the 1970s, I have been experiencing continuously a sharp learning curve about America’s position in the world and about global relations and global economies specifically.

As a teacher or professor, I see myself as a servant.

Do you want a servant leading you or do you want the silver-spoon ill-trained leadership we have been having to date?

American Inc. can no longer function as it has done over the past 50 years. The party was over a long time ago. We need to stop the delusions about the status quo and move on.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_070926_important_debate_hel.htm


Now, we need to be more eclectic and less ideological as the Bush-Cheney leadership—if we can call it that—has been. (Our cronyist leadership looks more like a Middle Eastern Authoritarian system currently. This is demoralizing to Americans like me who have bee serving abroad and trying to promote democracy around the globe for three decades:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_070905_with_millions_of_ame.htm

Simply circling the wagons is not the mentality that will lead America to be a better leader and land in the 21st Century.

Please, get my name on the ballot at your caucus and give the voters a chance to vote fro someone who stands for a 21st Century America—not someone carrying out their cold war fantasies in a 21st Century world.

The object would be to show ourselves, the Republicans (and the Democrats) that our tent is not shrinking but growing.

Yours,

Kevin Stoda